Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I should explain that I have not usurped the position of my noble friend Lord German, who is in Strasbourg at the Council of Europe. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for not being physically on the Front Bench; from this position, I can be propped up.

Although Martin Hewitt has, as the noble Lord, said, a law enforcement and—I believe—Army background, I do not think it is necessary for the commander to have “rank”, to use the term in his Amendment 26. If the border command and the commander prove effective—in other words, if the institution lasts—I hope that the Secretary of State would be imaginative enough to think outside the box of people to whom the rank might be applied and consider those who might usefully carry on the function.

I do not want to speak too long at this point, but the noble Lord picked up the issue of delegation. It struck me—I understand it is not possible to amendment it—that the heading to Clause 7 really does not describe what is in the clause. The clause is right; it spells out where responsibility lies—that is not delegation. The responsibility remains with the commander, and I think that is correct. I do not know whether anyone can pick that up somewhere behind the scenes, at a later point.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of my noble friend’s amendments in this first group. Chapter 1 puts the commander role and organisation on a statutory footing but, as we heard, we already have a commander in place and the Bill provides very few—if any—real powers beyond the ability to facilitate co-operation between other public agencies. Given that those agencies are already arms of government and come under the responsibility of Ministers, who could presumably direct them to co-operate in the way the Government intend, I have a slightly broader question for the Minister: why is Chapter 1 necessary? Why do we need to put the commander on a statutory footing? This leads directly to the group of amendments that my noble friend has proposed.

We always need to be very careful about legislating just to make a public statement or point. Can the Minister tell us what the commander will be able to do under Chapter 1 that he is not able to do presently under the current arrangements? Who could argue with greater co-ordination between agencies, but do we really need the provisions of Chapter 1 to achieve that?

I am sure the Minister is grateful to my noble friend for trying to flesh out the role a little bit more. It is written in five or so pages, an awful lot of which has to do with the appointment, the board, potential removal terms and so forth. There is really very little—only a few lines—about the office’s real function and responsibilities.

Looking more specifically at Amendment 2 and my noble friend’s list in proposed new subsection (5)(a), (b) and (c), he might also consider adding someone with a background in the broader security apparatus of the country.

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I had not meant to take part in this debate, but I wonder whether I am the only Member of your Lordships’ Committee who is finding it rather surreal—mainly the lack of urgency, although I am not blaming the Minister for that. However, even as we speak in here today, dozens—probably hundreds—of illegal migrants are wandering up the beaches of Kent and disappearing into our country. This Bill cannot become law for some considerable time; surely a greater sense of urgency is necessary.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, that there is a great sense of urgency from this Government on the issue that he raises. The people are not “wandering up the beaches” of Dover. They are being collected by boats in the channel when the criminal gangs bring them across, and then they are taken for identification and processing. It has been a long while since people walked up the beaches of Dover—it was under a previous Government that they put their feet in that Kent sand. They are now being dealt with in an effective way.

The purpose of the border commander and the clauses before us today is not to have the limited ambition that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, indicated he thought was behind the Bill; it is to maximise the ambition and ensure that we put it in place strongly and effectively. That goes to the heart of the noble Viscount’s comments as well, because we are very clear that the border commander has a number of key roles to play. The border commander has been put in place to co-ordinate and organise—yes—but he has a significant budget of £150 million this year and in the recent spending review has been given by the Chancellor an additional significant budget for the three years hence.

The purpose of that co-ordinating role is to do what I think is appropriate, which is to co-ordinate and bring together agencies in the UK. The commander will also, on behalf of the Home Secretary and the Government, take part in further negotiations with our partner colleagues in Europe and the Middle East, as has been seen today, to ensure that we put in place mechanisms to reduce the flow that the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, rightly highlighted as an important issue for us to take forward.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister. Before he moves on from the points that I made, can he answer the question about what the commander will be able to do under the provisions of the Bill that his office cannot do currently, on a non-statutory footing? We do not need new legislative provisions to achieve co-ordination, advice and budgetary management—witness the fact that there is already a commander in place who is busy co-ordinating.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I appreciate the noble Viscount’s comments, but the clauses in Chapter 1—for example, “Duty to prepare annual reports”, “Duties of cooperation etc” and “The Board” overseeing all that—underpinned by statutory function give this House the confidence that there is a legislative background to those requirements on the Border Security Commander. The noble Viscount is right that the current Border Security Commander, appointed by the Home Secretary, is undertaking those roles as a civil servant, but it is important that we underpin that with a legislative framework so that this House, the House of Commons, the Government and the people are clear about what the roles and responsibilities are. We have taken that view, and the noble Viscount may disagree or want further clarification, but that is the purpose of the first 12 clauses of the Bill.

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[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton is unable to be here and has therefore asked me to speak to his amendment. I tried to add my name, but it was too late for the deadline.

Clause 9 requires the commander to comply with directions and “have regard to guidance” by the Secretary of State about the exercise of the commander’s functions. The amendment requires the Secretary of State to

“consult such persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate before issuing or revising directions or guidance”

under Clause 9. That is fine, but the issue is whether we will ever know what guidance the Secretary of State has given; in other words, the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that, when the Secretary of State issues this guidance, she shall act in a transparent manner and consult appropriate persons before issuing or revising directions or guidance under Clause 9. It is a matter of having some openness in how this thing happens; otherwise, we will never know quite what instructions have come from the Secretary of State.

I understand that the Law Society of Scotland produced a pretty good briefing on this. Although the amendment does not, of course, confine itself to Scotland but covers all parts of the United Kingdom, nevertheless, my noble friend and I are indebted to the briefing from the Law Society of Scotland. This is simply a bid for openness in the way in which the functions are to be exercised.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Cameron, which seek to flesh out what the role of this organisation is to be and to put more detail on objectives and functions. If one looks at the functions of the commander, one sees that the meat of this is really in two points made over four and a half lines, so it is very thin indeed. It is an organisation that has already been established, as we know, and there is already an incumbent, so I think it would help the Committee a great deal if the Minister were to explain what the organisation is really going to look like. We talk about the border commander as if it is an individual, and indeed that person is an individual, but then we go on to talk about the command—the organisation.

The Minister has talked in terms of hundreds of millions of pounds, potentially, at the disposal of this organisation, or if not at its disposal, then it would have a high degree of influence over it. These are very considerable sums of money when one considers the overall budget, for example, of the Border Force, so will the Minister set out what the actual border commander’s organisation, the BSC, will look like? On what sort of scale will it be, in terms of staff, for example? A figure of £150 million was mentioned that will, in essence, be put at the disposal of the commander. What does that mean? What is the operating budget of this organisation going to be? Can the noble Lord help us? To look at this as an organisation rather than as an individual, £150 million gets you a lot of co-ordination. Can we hear more about the structure, the functions, the skills of the staff that will be working there, the type of experience, the operating budget and what returns are sought on the budgets that are being put forward?

I welcome the opportunity for the Minister, in response to my noble friend’s amendments, and indeed the others that have been discussed, to come forward and help the Committee establish what type of organisation we are talking about. He might care to illustrate it through an example of how the new organisation will interact with the Border Force. Who is going to be, in a sense, holding the strategic priorities? Which organisation is going to have influence over the other? I am sure it would help the Committee a great deal if the Minister were able to do that.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 71 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord German. I had expected that it would be grouped with my mine and others’ amendments about Europol. Those are in later groups, but this one got bounced up, I guess for understandable reasons because it is about a duty on the border commander, so it makes sense to group it either way, as it were. That means there is going to be a slightly disjointed discussion on Europol, but I am delighted to raise the issue sooner rather than later.

I am hoping for a positive response from the Minister, because when the UK-EU summit on 19 May produced the so-called common understanding—it is a slightly awkward term, but it is the reset result, and a good result it was—there was, in particular, a point on internal security and judicial co-operation, and that referred back to doing better work on Part Three of the trade and co-operation agreement. In case noble Lords do not have the document under their eyes, Article 567 of the TCA is about the scope of co-operation with Europol. It talks about “the exchange of information”, including

“specialist knowledge … general situation reports … results of strategic analysis … information on criminal investigation procedures … information on crime prevention methods … participation in training activities”

and

“the provision of advice and support in individual criminal investigations as well as operational cooperation”.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am again grateful for the amendments tabled, because they have sparked a discussion on a range of issues.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, I note that the Government will set objectives, will have policies on these areas and will, as they have already done, set out their proposals and plans to deal with these issues. We are establishing the Border Security Commander post to assist the Government in the effective co-ordination and delivery of those points. We have put in £150 million in this financial year to support that post. We have agreed with the SR, through the hard work of the current Border Security Commander, an additional £280 million over the three-year period. That is determined to deliver on the Government’s strategic objectives to secure our borders and to provide the security on all the issues that we discussed in the debate on the previous set of amendments.

There are wider issues, which the noble Lord, Lord Empey, mentioned, and which form part of the Government’s consideration under the immigration White Paper that they produced four or five weeks ago and presented to this House. It has masses of detail about the long-term issues that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned, including the interpretation of Article 8. Clearly and self-evidently, we will examine the report that the JCHR—the Select Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Alton—has produced on those issues; it is a good, wide-reaching document and the Government will consider it and respond to it in due course.

This is, therefore, not the only tool in the box to address the wider issues and downstream challenges around why people are moving in the first place and seeking asylum through either illegal or irregular means. There are issues to do with the interpretation of Article 8, and there is a constant flow of activity in the Home Office assessing all the issues that the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Empey, mentioned.

I will turn my focus back to the amendments, which are about the Border Force Commander. The strategic priorities, which the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, mentioned, are very clear. In Clause 3, we are trying to give great scope to the Border Security Commander to produce a plan to deal with the challenges that are discussed with the Home Secretary on a weekly basis and to deliver effective outcomes.

Since being in post, the Border Security Commander has, for example, struck new anti-smuggling action plan agreements with the G7 and bilateral agreements with Italy, Germany, Serbia and the Balkan states. He has increased UK operations with Europol, which the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, mentioned. He has essentially been the driving force behind the Calais group—France, Belgium, Holland, and the United Kingdom—in looking at what measures we need to take.

There are additional resources, and the noble Viscount rightly challenged us on how they are used. They have been used to date to employ additional people under Border Security Command initial direction, to support work on a range of issues. For example, over 200 people are working in a variety of areas on the border security strategy as a whole, and there is support for 100 new officers to deal with Border Security Command as a whole. That has now closed twice as many social media accounts as before, increased the cost of gang and boat engine packages, and supported over 80 ongoing investigations with the National Crime Agency. A whole range of things is going on now, and again, I hope that, with the legal framework in place in the Bill, there will be, as the Bill says, an annual strategy and an annual report to Parliament via the Home Secretary on the outcomes of these proposals and policies.

The group of amendments which was produced by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel—again, they are perfectly legitimate questions to ask—set out effectively issues that are in the functions of the commander in Clause 3, including requirements for the commander to seek to maximise

“the effectiveness of the activities of partner authorities relating to threats to border security”.

The first of these objectives is the very one that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned. The Government have been clear that preventing dangerous crossings and dismantling organised gangs that are facilitating those journeys is a top priority. Indeed, the work of the Border Security Command and its partners is now delivering results.

Just this month, a suspected organised crime boss and his associates were arrested for facilitating hundreds of individuals entering the UK illegally as part of a surge in law enforcement activity co-ordinated by the Border Security Command. The Government are working to restore order and control of the migration system in the wider ways that we have talked about with the noble Lord, Lord Empey. That is central. I welcome, in a sense, the agreement and understanding from the amendments, but it is central to the core proposals of the Border Security Command.

A further amendment would also allow Border Security Command to issue directions to partner authorities for specified purposes. I just do not think that the power to direct is required. In oral evidence sessions in the House of Commons, we heard from the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council. They welcomed and supported the role and collaboration to date with the Border Security Commander and the arrangements provided for in the Bill, which will reflect and respect the operational requirements of the various board members.

I know he is not here at the moment, but the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, raised the issue of operational responsibilities at Second Reading. We have to respect that, but there is a role for co-ordination and extra financial support and direction from the Border Security Commander centrally. Under Clause 5, partner authorities have a duty to co-operate with the commander in so far as it is reasonably practical for them to do so, and under Clause 3, partner authorities must have regard to the strategic priorities, which will have been endorsed and consulted on, supported by the Secretary of State and by the board, and in Clause 3(4)(b), the current wording in the Bill ensures that all parts of the system work coherently to tackle the very border security threats that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has raised in his amendment, while respecting the operational independence of the various partner authorities. The amendment as proposed would potentially undermine that valuable operational independence.

So I understand where the noble Viscount is coming from and the need to press on those matters—and I understand the need for the noble Viscount to intervene, which I will allow him to do.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

It is very generous of the Minister to interrupt his afternoon and his peroration to let me do so.

I asked the Minister just to give the Committee a bit more detail. He talked about some teams of people who were undertaking various different tasks. But what is the anticipated annual operating budget of the organisation, and what is the very approximate staff complement that is anticipated for the organisation once it is up and running?

He talked about various initiatives, saying that the Border Force Commander had done this and done that, all of which sounded very positive and laudable. But are we talking about the border commander’s organisation undertaking executive programmes: is it delivering some of these initiatives? The way it is portrayed in the Bill and the way the Minister has described it, the organisation’s individual will be co-ordinating but the actual delivery will be done through other partner agencies. Is that still the case?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Border Security Commander has a co-ordinating but also a strategic directional role, so, in consultation with the various partners, he will be producing a plan which brings together various partners who are currently operating independently, some of whom are not even within the Home Office’s direct responsibility areas, because there are, as we talked about earlier on, biosecurity elements of Defra and others there, to effect a strategic plan for the three-year period of the SR, for which he has been given £280 million to determine how the plan is used and implemented from the SR settlement.

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Lastly, the purpose of Amendment 12 is to ensure that the strategic priority document supports the Home Office’s UK border strategy, published in 2020, which set out the developmental plan for the innovation of the United Kingdom’s borders up to 2025 in order to transform and improve the nation’s security and biosecurity. This is crucial to facilitate the effective and technological evolution of our borders and can be guaranteed only if the commander’s work is aligned with the rest of the Home Office’s work to secure our border. I beg to move.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 11 in this group is an amendment to my noble friend’s Amendment 10.

Before I get into the detail of it, I must support what my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said in the previous group. They put their finger on one of the key issues: namely, that the Secretary of State cannot step back and abrogate her responsibility to set strategic priorities. Surely the Secretary of State is ultimately responsible for setting the strategic priorities. It would be better for the Bill to say that the Secretary of State will publish the strategic priorities for the organisation, having been advised by the border commander and having consulted the commander and other relevant agencies. It seems quite a circular argument for the border commander to be invited to come up with their own strategic priorities and then set out how they intend to address them—there is an element of marking your own homework here. We will listen carefully to what the Minister has to say to the point about the strategic priorities coming from the border commander rather than from the Secretary of State. It may well be something we wish to return to.

The origins of Amendment 11 lie in an exchange I had with the Minister at Second Reading, to which he followed up with a letter. The question I had asked him was this: what is the Government’s understanding of the specific factors that drive desperate people to take their lives and those of their families into their own hands and undertake a sea crossing with, potentially, the peril of death or serious injury? Why would they come from at least one other safe country—generally France—or a series of safe countries they might have passed through? Why would they risk everything, including their lives and those of their families, to come specifically to the UK? What is it about the regulatory, commercial or cultural situation in the UK that causes people to come here?

The Minister was kind enough to provide me with a substantial letter, which I hope he will not mind me paraphrasing by saying that his answer was, “We don’t really know”. It was more complicated than that but that was the thrust of it. I think we should know and should be honest about the factors, whether they are to do with the support provided, the level of control we intend to exert over people who come here irregularly or illegally, or the organised crime gangs—all factors the Minister touched on—or whether it is also to do with the chances of deportation. I wonder whether the Minister can assist the Committee by telling us the average rate of deportation of people who have come here through illegal or irregular means or who have crossed the channel in small boats?

I believe there is another factor as well, which is the opportunity for irregular migrants to take on paid work, whatever the regulations say. I am sure the Minister is very well aware, for example, of the coverage on the front pages of national newspapers yesterday about people coming from government-funded hotels where they have been housed and undertaking work for some big companies—as a contractor, I suspect. We have to grapple with those factors and be honest about them. We need to tackle the demand side as well as the supply side. I appreciate that this Bill is very much about addressing the supply side, and quite rightly so, but it is incredibly important that we look at the specific demand factors that are driving people to risk their lives to come to the UK in preference to other European countries.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to noble Lords. I will try to answer the noble Viscount immediately. It was very kind that he paraphrased my reply as “We don’t know”. A tadge unfair, I fear, but an opinion none the less. We do know about the many issues that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, refers to on a regular basis—war, hunger and oppression—that drive people to leave their homes or force people out of their homes. There are many people who are criminally trafficked across Europe. There are many people who attempt to come to the United Kingdom because of simple things such as speaking English as opposed to other foreign languages or because of the nirvana promised to them by criminal gangs. There is a range of pull factors that we know about, and we are consistently assessing those.

The noble Viscount might be interested to know that, under the previous Government, in the years between January 2018 and March 2025, 94% of small boat arrivals had an asylum claim raised, and outcomes from those asylum claims varied. People from Afghanistan had 37% of asylum claims agreed, for people from Syria it was 99%, for people from Eritrea it was 86%, for people from Iran it was 48% and for people from Sudan it was 98%. There is a variety. That is because the factors that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly continually raises in this House are very often push factors rather than pull factors. They are push factors from areas of high levels of poverty, war or other disruptive influences.

Our model has to be to try to smash the criminal gangs and to remove their ability to traffic effectively, for the reasons that we have debated all afternoon. In that, the role of the border commander is critical. The amendments that have been brought forward by His Majesty’s Opposition’s Front Bench look at, first, specifying the frequency with which the Border Security Commander must issue a strategic priority document. The Border Security Commander can issue a strategic priority document to partner authorities setting out the principal threats to border security, but I want the Border Security Commander to have flexibility to update those priorities as and when threats evolve. The very changes that the noble Viscount and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have mentioned might well impact upon that. Under the terms of the amendment, the production of a document annually would not allow that to happen. I want it to be a fluid operation between the Border Security Commander and others.

Members have also asked who is setting the strategic priority. The framework we have set out in the Bill is clear: the Border Security Commander will be setting strategic objectives, having consulted a board that is established under the Bill, having consulted partner agencies which have operational responsibility—as mentioned—under the Bill, having discussed it with the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary, who will themselves have discussed it with other Ministers, and having produced clear evidence of what the pressures on border security are. The plan will then be produced. We are currently looking at the issues that I mentioned earlier—the operational delivery of that and the members of staff, and so on, downstream—about which I will write to the noble Viscount.

We have a £280 million resource for the next three years of the spending review, and we will be looking at how we do that when allocations are made later this year. However, I say to His Majesty’s Opposition Front Bench and other noble Lords who have raised these issues that the flexibility to produce a plan with the Border Security Commander under the strategic objectives set by the Government is critical.

Other amendments set out that additional information should be included in the strategic priority document. The Government are working hard to prevent dangerous sea crossings, to target smuggling gangs, to make sure that they do not put lives at risk and to address the factors that are driving illegal immigration from safe countries. The strategic policy document is issued to partner authorities and sets out the strategic priorities that they must have in exercising those functions. Again, I hope the noble Lord will reflect on the proposals in the Bill in due course because it is not clear how suitable the assessment set out in the amendment would be for such a document.

Amendment 12 aims to ensure that the strategic priority document issued by the Border Security Commander and the UK border strategy are supportive of each other. Again, border security is a fundamental part of the wider strategic approach to the border and strategic priorities for border security, which will help to drive the wider UK Government approach. Indeed, the whole purpose of the Bill is to ensure that we coherently and sensibly convene activity across the whole UK border system. It is therefore not really plausible to imagine a situation whereby the commander’s priorities, setting consultation with the board, would be at odds with wider priorities set by other agencies. The whole purpose of the Bill is to provide the grasp, coherence, drive and strategic forum for the exercise of these measures to deal with the very issues that we have all mentioned in this short debate.

I hope that helps regarding the amendments. We can return to these on Report if need be, but I hope that for the moment I have addressed the issues raised.

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Amendment 21 speaks to another fundamental issue, and that is accountability. It would simply require the Government to publish in their annual report key data on how many people have been charged or convicted under specific provisions of the Act, how many have arrived via illegal sea crossings, how many are being detained and how many have been deported. We are told that the Bill is about deterrence and enforcement; we can judge its effectiveness only if we have the numbers and the data. I say to the Minister that, if the Government are proud of what they are delivering, this amendment should be easy to accept. It is not an unreasonable ask, it is basic transparency and, without it, we risk having enforcement in the dark without oversight or evidence. On that basis, I beg to move.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, and I certainly support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Cameron. The first of my amendments, Amendment 22, is very straightforward in saying that the commander should publish financial accounts. Clause 4 refers to the financial year but not the publication of financial accounts. It is very important that we have discipline around what the purpose of the organisation is and what will be the return on the investment the public are making in it. When the Minister comes to respond on this group, perhaps he will guide the Committee as to whether the £150 million that has been mentioned is, in effect, new money being put into this organisation or whether it represents a reallocation of existing budgets. Perhaps it is a blend of the two.

That brings me on to Amendment 24, which could almost be thought of as post-legislative scrutiny on an ongoing basis for the new structure that is envisaged. It is a new layer—I will not use the word bureaucracy, but it is a new agency essentially—designed to co-ordinate other agencies, rather than necessarily operationally deliver outcomes itself. There is, therefore, undoubtedly a danger, which I am sure the Government recognise, that having another cook in this kitchen could destroy value rather than add value. We need to be clear about what the real outcome is, over a period of years, of the initiatives that the Government have brought forward. We certainly give them credit for doing so for all the right reasons.

Perhaps my drafting was rather inelegant, but this is not about the performance of the individual commander; I am talking about the commander’s organisation—the BSC. It is about asking whether the partner agencies continue to believe that the new agency is adding value and doing things that could not otherwise be done. If it does not work as we all hope it will, there must be an argument that it should be stood down and the co-ordination function perhaps be taken up by another agency or indeed by the Home Office itself.

These are two very straightforward amendments. The first point is that the Government need to be accountable for the money spent, and the second is that the partner agencies that will be the beneficiaries—or otherwise—of this co-ordination should be able to express their views about the efficacy of the structure. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was unable to attend Second Reading. I have put my name to a number of later amendments, but I wanted to say how much I support the spirit of this group. On the issue of boat crossings, there is a feeling in relation to smashing the gangs that there is a huge amount of smoke and mirrors and not enough transparency and understanding. I fear that there is a climate of public distrust in which politicians are just not believed.

These amendments would therefore be really helpful to the Government, because they give assurances that this will be fully accounted for and not just a slogan, as has been indicated. The area around these crossings is a territory for rumour and potential misinformation. All sorts of figures are bandied around and people, because they no longer believe in the official figures, are open to all sorts of untrue figures. These amendments would help pin down exactly what this Bill will have achieved, which is very important.

There was an interesting incident recently where journalists—Patrick Christys and a team from GB News—helped to smash the gangs themselves. They did this by going on Instagram and pretending to be trying to get a crossing; they organised one and had WhatsApp communications, voice messages and so on, partly as a sting operation to show how easy it is to infiltrate the gangs and get this information. They passed on the information to the appropriate authorities. They have chased it up, and nothing has happened. Even though they had the names and phone numbers—because they were WhatsApp messages—of two gang leaders, nothing has happened to those people. Those journalists understandably used this to say, “For all the rhetoric about the gangs and this new piece of legislation saying that it will smash them, will it really?”

The first two amendments in this group will tell the public what they want to know about this Bill—how many gang leaders have been arrested and what exactly has happened. I urge the Government to look at these amendments favourably, as helpful to their cause and to the general atmosphere, so that we do not have public cynicism about political rhetoric without action.

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[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

The Minister was doing so well until he decided it would be a great moment to start beating up the Opposition. I think we are all on the same side on this. We share common objectives here and it has been a great, positive debate, so that is really not necessary. In so many of the comments that I make, it does not matter that we are sitting on opposite sides of the Committee.

To say that we are going to just talk about the outcomes without talking about the inputs is crazy. I will definitely come back to press the Minister further if he does not wish to accept my amendment. The noble Lord has come forward with a package of measures. We need to know what the ongoing costing is, and we need to be able to extrapolate as far as we can between the input and the output and whether that money would be better spent, for example, by the agencies that are being co-ordinated.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

In the spirit of co-operation and the hand of friendship that the noble Viscount has reached out, I say that it is a valid challenge. There is a place for accounts and there is a place for reports on performance, but it is a valid challenge to which we will return in due course. I will certainly reflect on the points he has mentioned, which is the purpose of our discussion today.

I just wished to put the statistics on record because I did not wish to let down the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, or for him to think I am never going to be a bruiser again on these issues. Therefore, it is important occasionally to put some facts on the record. Those are not my facts; they are government statistics that go to the heart of the amendment brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, about whether we include them in the annual report or, as we do now, produce them on a quarterly basis on a range of those measures.

I do not wish to let the noble Viscount think I have missed the other point he raised, about the £150 million this year for the cost of the Border Security Commander. I am sure he will be pleased to know that this was new money. Effectively, in being new money, it was savings from the money that was allocated for the Rwanda scheme, which never actually materialised once the current Government came into place. We have reallocated Rwanda resources to the Border Force and the Border Security Command. We have also reallocated it elsewhere to help speed up asylum system claims by recruiting additional staff.

Jumping ahead slightly to future clauses in the Bill, that is essentially part of the recalibration that the current Government undertook on election just after this time last year to make some real changes and to try to improve longer-term performance on the issues on which we both agree: to reduce illegal migration and to respond positively to irregular migration in due course.

The noble Viscount’s second amendment mentions the partner authorities who attend the commander’s board, who would be able to collaborate on the development of the annual reports. The commander will not create this report in isolation; it will be a collaborative effort, but the commander’s job, self-evidently, is to pull together an annual report that shows how they have performed against the objectives that have been set in the strategic priorities. I do not believe that the amendment is necessary, but we will reflect on those matters and we can return to them in due course.

I hope that I have answered those points, and I look forward to hearing the response from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron.

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I take that in good heart, as the noble Baroness and I are members of a committee of the House in which we share rumbustious debate. I am sorry that noble Lords have stumbled into “immigration law for dummies”, because neither of us is an expert on it. However, I think she is comparing apples and pears, because the example that she uses of dangerous driving is actually a strict liability offence, where mens rea is not an issue; in other words, it is not presumed that you would wilfully desire to get into a car and drive drunk in committing the offence. It is not necessary to prove it.

I am not saying that the noble Baroness is doing or saying anything out of line; I am merely demonstrating that one has to address wider issues in this policy area. For those reasons, the amendment is unhelpful in meeting the Government’s strategic objective to reduce illegal immigration.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I have not heard too many debates in which your Lordships have moaned about the lack of lawyers participating, but we have listened to two people who claim not to be experts.

I will touch on Clause 13 in the context of Amendment 36 from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. This is really a question for the Minister: I do not understand Clause 13(3)(b), which is the “reasonable excuse” related to whether the individual concerned was

“acting on behalf of an organisation which … aims to assist asylum-seekers, and … does not charge for its services”.

That is an extraordinarily widely drawn and unqualified reasonable excuse ground.

It would certainly help me and may even be of assistance to the broader Committee if the Minister could give a couple of examples of the types of scenario envisaged and could provide some reassurance that this is not too broadly drawn as an area to provide a reasonable excuse. I genuinely do not know and do not have a particular view about that, but, on the face of it, without further qualification, it seems to be very broadly drawn. I look forward to the Minister’s explanation.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, the Opposition Front Bench’s view on this is that we side with my noble friend Lord Jackson on the group of amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. At their core, as others have said, the amendments would rewrite the structure of the offence in Clause 13 by placing the burden of proof for the test of reasonable excuse squarely on the prosecution. The implications of the change would be significant—I will come back to the law in a moment—as it would dilute the seriousness with which we treat those who are convicted of supplying articles for use in immigration crime.

Let us be absolutely clear about what Clause 13 addresses. It addresses the supply of forged documents, false identity papers and materials designed to facilitate illegal entry into the UK. Those are not minor infractions; they are serious crimes that underpin the business models of trafficking gangs, enable the circumvention of border controls and directly endanger lives. In such cases, it is entirely appropriate that, if an individual is found supplying such items, it should be for them to demonstrate that they had a legitimate reasonable excuse.

I would suggest—it has been some time since I practised criminal law—that that is not some obscure or novel principle. Of course, the usual legal position is that it is for the prosecution to prove the elements of the crime. But it is not unusual to reverse the burden of proof on to an accused in some circumstances. It reflects well-established frameworks in other serious areas of law, most notably in the Misuse of Drugs Act, in firearms legislation and in the Companies Act, where it is for an accused director to prove that all reasonable steps have been taken to avoid committing an offence.

In legislation on firearms and the misuse of drugs, the burden of establishing a lawful or innocent reason rests with the person accused of being in possession of or supplying the prohibited article. So, this is not an unusual path to take, and to shift the burden back to the prosecution, as these amendments would do, would make it harder to secure convictions, weaken the deterrent effect of the law and send precisely the wrong message at a time when we face record levels of illegal entry and organised criminal facilitation across our borders.

The public expect us to ensure that the law acts as a meaningful deterrent to those who seek to undermine it. This group of amendments would not do that. It would make it easier for those facilitating unlawful entry to escape liability and place an unnecessary an inappropriate burden on prosecutors, who are already contending with highly complex cases. Let us not forget that those convicted of supplying articles for use in immigration crime are not passive actors but deliberate enablers of lawbreaking. To demand that the prosecution proves not only the supply but the absence of any reasonable excuse would be to fundamentally misread the nature of the offence and the damage that it causes.

This goes to the heart of the problem that we have debated all afternoon: the people we are talking about are organised criminals who make money by endangering the lives of those they profess to help. It is not the time to rewrite what is, in my view, a long-standing legal norm in a way that would weaken enforcement. It is time to uphold the seriousness of the crime and ensure that our legal tools are effective in tackling it.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I too very much enjoyed the excellent maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Harper, who showed us a glint of steel, heavily disguised by wit and deftness of touch. I think we all look forward very much to hearing more from him, including on this Bill, when he can withdraw his sabre completely.

My overriding impression of this debate has been that there has been far more that unites us than divides us. In the full range of contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, to my noble friend Lord Lilley and all in between—if they will accept being the bookends of this excellent debate—there is a general acceptance that it really is the legitimate expectation of those we serve as parliamentarians that the Government must be able to defend and control our borders, described in the Explanatory Notes as “a vital strategic asset”, and indeed to remove those with no right to be here. It really is as simple as that.

Despite our island geography, we clearly do not have security at the border, and successive Governments have failed in this regard. We really should move on from ownership of historical policies and, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bach, in his contribution to the previous debate on sentencing, take some of the heat and the blame game out of this. To move towards common approaches towards a complex problem is an admirable objective.

There really is a question of competence in government, and the public are tired of failure. People look to government, and indeed to Parliament, not for explanations about how difficult this is but for solutions. If the legal and regulatory framework, either domestically or internationally, is the obstacle, then, in partnership with our European partners and with other nations, we should seek to find proper, pragmatic, fair and humanitarian solutions that change the international regulatory regime. I listened with great interest to the previous speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, who gave an excellent explanation of the imperative so to do in a pragmatic and fair way.

There is much that is admirable in this Bill. An awful lot of it feels very technical. Some of it feels just a little presentational, such as talk of commanders without too much to command, which has already been noted. It does not contain some of the ID card proposals that my noble friend Lord Swire, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and others talked about. Those would of course be much greater technical and policy moves than is contained in the Bill.

I suspect that much of our debates in Committee and thereafter on Report will be more about what is not in than what is in the Bill. I certainly welcome the pragmatic and sensible measures, many of which I was surprised are not already available to law enforcement authorities. However, I would like to ask the Minister what level of impact he believes the package of measures he is bringing forward in this Bill will have. There is a wealth of data on the situation; no doubt the Government have undertaken detailed analysis on the projected efficacy on the combination of these initiatives. What are the targets for improvements? What are the KPIs which the border security commander will be tasked with delivering? What does success look like?

In order to discuss the solution, one first has to understand the problem. People are travelling through numerous European safe countries before making the extremely hazardous trip across the channel to access the UK. Can the Minister respond in detail—if he does not have time this evening, perhaps he would be kind enough to write to me—on the factors in the intelligence the Government have which they believe drive people to risk their lives and those of their children and families to come to the UK rather than to stay in another safe country, namely France? This may be in terms of how they are treated when they arrive, the opportunity to remain in the UK, benefits when they settle here and any other factors that he considers relevant. We need to have a proper understanding of that in order to work out what the solution is.

The biggest issue is clearly the perverse incentive which rewards those who come here through illicit means. Until we can make a statement, backed up, supported by and compliant with international law, that if people come to the UK through illegal means, they will extremely prejudice their changes of staying in the country, we are not going to win and will undoubtedly fail.

Much has been made of the Australian example and the efficacy of its deterrent measures. I note a statement made by Rear Admiral Justin Jones, then commander of the Australian Maritime Border Command in a public video in 2022. He said, “Australia is resolute. Our border protection policies will not change. No one who attempts to travel illegally by boat will be allowed to settle here. No matter who you are or where you are from, our borders are closed to illegal migration. The only way to Australia is with a valid visa. You have zero change with illegal migration”. That is an interesting comparison, but the emphasis is on politicians in the United Kingdom and our European partner nations to look at the international regulatory settlement together to come up with a solution.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, as other noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Carlile, have said, there are many who feel that 100 would have been a better threshold, including many of the families of the victims. There is no amendment to reduce the threshold to 100, which is a shame, not least because I know it is what many in the Martyn’s law campaign group would have liked to see.

We should recall that the House of Commons backed 200, which is probably an acceptable compromise because, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, we ultimately will not agree on this, but it has to be about a compromise and the House of Commons overwhelmingly supported 200. Pushing the threshold up to 400 or 500 would destroy the whole purpose of the Bill.

It is, of course, important, as some noble Lords on the Conservative Benches said, that we do not overly add to the burden, or add unnecessary obstacles to creativity or to developing a sustainable business model. But encouraging people in charge of venues or events to think through what they would do in the event of a terrorist attack surely makes good business sense. There is in what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, proposes the risk of unintended consequences. There is a risk that raising the threshold would put people off going to small venues and small organisations of, say, under 200 or even under 100, because they will know they have not been covered by the Bill.

We on these Benches will support the Government in their threshold of 200 unless, in the course of further debate, there can be really compelling reasons to change our minds.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, when the Minister comes to answer this short group of amendments, could he comment on what assessment there has been of the SIA’s capacity to advise and regulate these potentially hundreds of thousands of applications, and on the capacity of the security industries and consultancies that will provide expertise to assist applicants in putting forward their detailed plans?

We have had a very emotive discussion on these amendments, which I regret to a degree, because this is an incredibly important discussion about where the line falls. There does have to be a line, but one consequence of moving it from 100 to 200, or 200 back to 100, or to 500, or whatever it may be, is around the actual pragmatic capacity of the regulatory body, the Government and the industry that will provide consultancy services to enable what everyone in this Chamber wants to happen. I would be grateful if the Minister would address that point when he comes to respond.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, mentioned the 800 figure. For the very same reason that the 200 figure—

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think it was me.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I thought the noble Lord mentioned 800.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

It was the other one.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Sorry, I left north Wales at 7 am, so it has been a long day already. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, mentioned the figure of 800. Why have we come to our figure? I can make all sorts of justifications. Two hundred takes into account the greatest number of large premises, so it is a figure that we have determined accordingly. We have to set the figure at a certain level and we have done so following the wide range of consultation that has taken place.

EU Borders: Hand and Face Scanning

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that. That is a long-overdue compliment to the passport service, which has been operating extraordinarily efficiently now for quite some time. I remember there was a lot of disquiet on Opposition Benches post Covid about how long it took to square off the backlog. I have not heard any commendations for its recent very strong performance.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend give an indication of the comparison that has been made between the efficacy and performance of the systems planned to be introduced on the other side of the channel and those systems that are in place at the UK end of passport control and immigration? Is he satisfied that our technology deployed in the UK is at least of equivalent complexity and competency?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I cannot say whether it is of the same complexity, but I can say that the ETA system, which, as noble Lords will be aware, began to be rolled out last year, is working very efficiently, so I am very optimistic about our end of the bargain.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I broadly support what the Government are trying to do here. There will be times when you might disagree with some of the language, but it seems to me that the only reason why the Government are bringing forward these proposals is that they have been asked to. I do not think they set off with an agenda to limit protest, but presumably people have complained about it. The public have complained; the media have complained, representing the public; and sometimes the police have complained—and everybody has complained about the police, which is not an unusual place to be. That is the nature of the job.

What the police want is some simple law that they can implement on behalf of the public to protect the weak against those who sometimes intimidate them. That seems to me to be what this part of the Bill is trying to address.

British policing, and criminal law generally, has always been about doing what is reasonable and making criminal what is unreasonable. It is about trying to strike that balance all the time. In most protests, people carry out their protest in a peaceful way that attracts attention. Sometimes it gets change and sometimes it fails. Sometimes it moves along the spectrum from irritation to nuisance, to serious disruption to life, to crime, to serious crime. Protests in the last group are relatively small in number, but when they happen they are pretty awful.

On the whole, the police do not want to be there. They are not seeking to be at a public protest, but in London you are probably talking about at least one protest march a day, every working day. Just to show the scale of the challenge that the Metropolitan Police faces—it happens in other parts of the country, but of course the Government, who attract most of the protests, are in London—on average, 400 or 500 officers are still drawn into central London every day for something called aid. It may see them coming out of Croydon or Lewisham to police central London, because there is no separate box; they have to come in to help police these types of protest. Of course, when they are doing that they are not in Croydon, Lewisham and all the other places, so it is something of significance that we all have to consider when we talk about the number of protests and the type that we allow.

The most difficult types of protest—I think this is pertinent to whether a senior police officer should have some powers in these cases—are those where the protesters generally do not engage or explain their plans. When both those things happen, on the whole, plans can be made. The police may not always agree with a certain approach, but some kind of agreement will be reached. That enables everybody to plan. The disruption that will flow is probably restrained to a reasonable amount. That goes back to the reasonableness test.

When those things do not happen—the people do not engage, do not have organisers who are prepared to engage, or do not even acknowledge that there are organisers, or they are prepared to take what others may regard as unreasonable action—it gets pretty hard for the police to deal with it and, more importantly, for the public to deal with the consequences.

The types of unreasonable things that I think everyone is always worried about include interference with free movement. That can mean just blocking a road. I do not think anybody minds it for five minutes, but an hour, four hours? We all have our own limits, but when it goes on for a long time, serious disruption can happen. Another type is any disruption of public space generally; we all want to go where we want to go, when we want to go there. Some of the people in this Chamber will be the most aggravated in dealing with cops who prevent them travelling through a protest, saying that they have a right to go where they want to go. They have a right to move around too, and of course we all have the right to enjoy our homes and places where we have a business. There are times when we all have a right to make the nuisance caused clear to the police and expect them to take some action.

Some of the tactics have changed recently. That is the nature of protests; they will always change. You are never going to have the protests of 50 years ago, as people will move on to try to achieve a new aim. We have seen the M25 blocked and Heathrow invaded. There was one case where protestors broke through a perimeter fence, went in and disrupted the international airport; eventually, they were found not guilty. Fine, if that is what happened in that case, but I do not think it a very safe thing to do, in the case of either the motorway or the international airport. Is it for the protester to decide what is safe and reasonable or is it for some objective standard? I cannot see how it is okay for you to be driving along the M25 at 70 miles per hour, at least, for people to decide it is now okay to block the road. I agree that obstruction of the highway is an existing offence, but this is something of far more gravity, which needs a new approach. The police struggle to interfere when people are preparing for acts of protest, where there is going to be a disruption. This is another thing that the legislation is trying to address.

I will mention some of the specific items that people have rightly been concerned about in this Bill. The first is noise. As the noble Lord, Lord Walney, said on noise, just because I shout, does that mean I am going to be locked up? That has never been the case and I doubt that it ever will be in the future but, whether it is 150 decibels, or 10 decibels in your ear for two hours or four hours, noise can be more than an irritant. We have a right to enjoy peace in whichever way we prefer. Noise can be injurious of itself.

I went to Notting Hill carnival every year on the bank holiday Monday. For anybody who has not been, and the ex-commander and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, must have been, there are these huge amplifiers. I do not know how many decibels they produce, but they are the size of a two-storey house. They can produce some significant effects. In fact, the police horses had to shift back, because they were knocked back by the percussion from the loudspeakers. Noise can be an irritant and do damage. We have to consider its effect on people, where it is either so loud or so persistent that it cannot be ignored. If people turn around to the police and say, “What are you going to do about it?” and they say, “Actually, it’s not illegal. It is okay and you shouldn’t be irritated by it,” that will not work. I will come back to why that is something that we have to think about.

I agree that it is hard to imagine a single-person protest of such significance that the police should intervene. However, we have seen it outside this place. Somebody with the right amplification can cause a lot of effect, particularly if it is outside your front door or business. People will ask for help and the police need to know where they stand on that. If Parliament does not want to help them to decide that issue, it is left to the officer on the street to decide. That goes back to the simple advice, at three o’clock in the morning or more likely nine o’clock at night, to make their own decisions. They are pretty good at acute problem-solving, but they deserve the support of Parliament to be clear about what is and is not okay.

There has been a slight tone from some contributions —perhaps this is just my old sensitivities—of “How can we possibly expect the police to make this type of decision?” I have to say that they make it every day and usually quite reasonably. Senior police officers have been making it on public order for years. Occasionally, it goes wrong but, on the whole, the British police get these things right. There are many things you can criticise the British police for, as we hear every day in here, but I do not think that dealing badly with protests is one of them. You can trust the cops to get this right and be reasonable, because they do not seek to fall out with the majority—or with anybody, come to that. I honestly think that you could trust them to make this type of decision, provided that the legislation is clear. There has been some challenge to the language, which I support, in some cases, as you can always make language more precise.

My final point is that it is important to get this right, for no other reason than that there is a debate between protesters’ right to protest and the police’s right to intervene. If we do not get it right, we leave the public to intervene on their own account. We have already seen examples of that. Before the cops arrived, the people at the front of the queue who were getting blocked said, “I’m going to move you. You’ve got two choices.” When the police arrived, it was a difficult situation to resolve. The law needs to be clear. There is a duty on the law, set by Parliament, to make clear lines in the sand, so that you do not leave members of the public to decide for themselves. That will end in the worst of all worlds.

To go back to my first point, the Government have only reacted to the concerns expressed by the public initially, sometimes through the vehicle of the media but also through the political process. I do not think that what has been proposed is entirely unreasonable. It can always be improved in this process and on Report, but it would be foolish to suggest that it is completely unreasonable to change the law to adapt to the tactics of the protesters.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, my speech can be very quick because I should just like to associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. It was an exceptionally informative and balanced speech about just how difficult these issues are and how difficult the job of the police is to draw that balance and get it right. We should all be extremely grateful that we are policed in such a consensual and high-quality way.

I spoke about this at Second Reading and we have had an exceptionally interesting debate here in Committee. I shall make just a couple of points. First, we ought to avoid, if at all possible, differentiating between good protests, on an issue that I agree with, and bad protests, on an issue that I disagree with. We should resist the temptation to talk about specific causes. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, made that point in one of her two speeches; I think that it was the second one.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Forgive me, but I did not make two speeches. I asked the Committee’s permission to read the remarks of my noble friend Lord Hendy because he could not be here to speak to his Amendment 304. I thought that I had the consent of the Committee. If I misunderstood that, I apologise, but I did not intend to make two speeches on my own part.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness spoke for nearly 20 minutes and I am attempting to speak for about two minutes.

We ought to avoid drawing the distinction to which I referred. However, there is a clear difference between a lawful expression of protest drawing attention to a particular issue, wanting it to be heard, and a deliberate and aggressive attempt to disrupt the lives of the general public. That is what we have seen over recent weeks. It is entirely reasonable that we look carefully at the current legislative settlement and examine what can be done with the existing powers. I hear the remarks made that the police have the powers that they need. Some feel that they do and others do not. That matter should be carefully looked at.

However, where there are gaps and where the police require additional powers to take those finely balanced judgments, it is entirely legitimate that we look at that in the Bill while maintaining a clear balance and making sure that we do not trespass too much on some of the issues that have been raised around, for example, noise. In essence, there are grounds for a constructive debate and finding that balance. It is never going to get everyone’s support but we all ought to look beyond the Westminster bubble and consider the reaction of the general public when they see their lives and critical national infrastructure such as transport being substantially disrupted and when the police are unable to deal with it effectively.

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I am not sure that I would have been elected Convenor of the Cross Benches if my colleagues had known that I, too, was once a protester.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, one can sense the eagerness and anticipation in this House, particularly among the seasoned parliamentary guerrilla fighters, to tackle a very broad range of issues that come within this very large Bill. Yes, it is a big Bill, but it covers a lot of very important subjects. I listened to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, attack the scale and scope of the Bill, but I recall a number of pretty weighty criminal justice Bills being introduced by the Government of whom he was a distinguished member, and having sat through many dozens of hours of scrutiny.

None the less, I accept the noble and learned Lord’s point—and it was made in a particularly poignant fashion by my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier—that we should really only legislate where a change in the law would genuinely address a challenge at hand that could not be tackled by better execution of the legislative powers that we already had. That should certainly be our watchword when considering a Bill such as this, rather than to govern by initiative.

Nevertheless, we have some very serious problems that we cannot just duck because they are difficult and complex. It is clearly not right that thousands—and, on occasion, millions—of people should have their lives and their human rights disrupted by aggressive and well-organised militants whose intention is the disruption itself rather than the protest. The world has changed, particularly as a result of technology and related social media, and we have to adapt accordingly.

I do not doubt that it is very difficult to find the right balance, and to find that just line to draw; however, I also strongly feel that it is wrong to belittle serious and thorough attempts to adapt the legislative framework to protect the rights of those who want to protest while equally protecting the rights of the vast majority to go about their lawful business without serious disruption. It is clear in my mind that the balance is not right now, as is shown by daily events. To bury our heads in the sand and refuse to recognise the problem is to abrogate our responsibility.

Have the Government got the balance right in this Bill? I must confess that I do not know. There are a lot of experts in this House, and I look forward to hearing what will be, no doubt, passionate debates on this subject. Similarly, I do not feel that we can ignore the fact that we have a serious problem with unauthorised encampments. There have been too many instances of great disruption and distress caused to local communities that have had to endure violence, intimidation, crime and damage to property, among other consequences. I hope that we will be able to consider this matter in the calm, balanced and respectful manner which is the hallmark of debate in your Lordships’ House, without questioning the motives of those who are seriously attempting to find a fair and balanced legislative solution.

This is an important Bill, covering a very broad range of subjects. I have a feeling that it will be a slightly less broad Bill by the time it departs this House, but we owe it to everyone to examine the proposals put forward, and the manner in which they have been put forward, with due consideration.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 5th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I too wish to welcome the Bill, which has received such widespread support. The Government are to be congratulated on bringing forward this important legislation.

Understanding of the nature of domestic abuse has grown immeasurably over recent years, not least as the result of powerful and effective advocacy from campaigning organisations. We have certainly come a long way from the situation historically, when domestic crime was seen in some quarters to be a private matter, to the current position where the dangers and severity of these crimes are properly recognised. This understanding has highlighted the need for bespoke, targeted legislation, which is indeed what we have before us.

I well recall the debate in this House we had in July 2017, introduced by my noble friend Lady Manzoor. The prospect of this Bill was a major focus point of that debate three and a half years ago, and now we have it before us today. As many others have stated, it represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen the legislative framework in this area, to target it more effectively and, of course, to provide proper safeguards.

I have learned a great deal from the speeches today, some of which, I have to say, have made very difficult and harrowing listening. Beyond expressing my broad welcome for the Bill, I would like to use my limited time to lend my support to one specific issue, which is the protection provided to a victim who is no longer living with the perpetrator—an issue raised by my noble friend Lady Bertin and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, among others.

In considering this issue, I am indebted to research from the University of Sussex, which has highlighted a significant problem with the current legislative settlement. As we have heard, the essence of the problem is that the Serious Crime Act 2015—the legislation that creates the offence of coercive or controlling behaviour—has a residency requirement, which means that the victim and the perpetrator need to be living together for the offence to be covered by the provisions of the Act. This means that former partners who were previously living together but now live apart are not caught by this provision, and thus, the full protection of the Act is not provided. This anomaly provides a perverse disincentive to victims considering, or in the process of, leaving their partners. We also know from research that separation from an abusive partner can be a trigger to violent behaviour, even homicide.

With the Bill before us we have a very straightforward solution to the problem. The enhanced definition of connected persons in Clause 2, right at the front, does not have that residency restriction in it. It therefore seems entirely logical for this new, enhanced definition to replace the equivalent provision in the Serious Crime Act. We would then have harmonisation, or coherence in the law, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, used in another context.

This Bill is classic House of Lords territory. Seldom have I heard such consensus around the Chamber in support of the overall policies contained in a major Home Office Bill, with almost all contributions focused on detailed areas where improvements can be made. We are very fortunate indeed to have a Minister handling the Bill who is herself an expert in this field, and we can look forward to detailed and pragmatic consideration of the forthcoming stages.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

The next speaker, I hope, is the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. We cannot hear him.

Domestic Violence and Abuse

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Manzoor for giving the House the opportunity to discuss this important and difficult subject this afternoon. I would like to make a short intervention in the debate to make only five points.

The first is to welcome the fact that this important issue receives a very much higher profile now than has historically been the case. The work of campaigners both inside and outside Parliament—I very much include those who have spoken in this debate, particularly my noble friend Lady Newlove, who made a very moving contribution just a moment ago—has brought this widespread and horrific crime to greater pubic prominence. I pay tribute to all those in the police, the health and social services, and the voluntary sector who have done, and continue to do, so much to ensure that the protection and support available is immeasurably better now than was the case only a few years ago. That is not in any way to diminish the very powerful representations that have been made for yet better services and greater co-ordination between agencies in the protection of victims.

I would like to refer to the Rob and Helen story that occurred in “The Archers”. It probably brought this issue to greater public prominence than any other single initiative in the UK for very many years, if not ever. I understand that more than 1 million additional listeners tuned in to hear the final throes of this moving and deeply disturbing story. It perhaps humanised the issue and brought home the realities of coercive control, to which a number of noble Lords have referred. Perhaps the BBC, which comes in for a lot of stick, should be commended for taking this brave initiative, which has done so much good.

It is important to seek to quantify the scale of the issue. As we have heard, the official statistics tell only part of the story. According to the ones that I saw for 2013-14, 887,000 incidents of domestic violence were recorded by the police. Those figure are now a couple of years out of date but they give a good indication of the situation. The true level is very difficult to measure, for all the reasons of non-reporting that are easy to understand, but the true scale is in the order of 2 million incidents, which is a huge number if one considers the adult population of the UK. There are thought to be currently 100,000 individuals in the country at high or imminent risk of serious abuse. I was also very interested to hear the words of my noble friend Lady Manzoor, who referred to the plight of older victims. I agree that they do not receive the degree of prominence that they should, and I am sure that it is an uncovered area of significant concern.

Secondly, I draw the House’s attention to the report entitled Getting it Right First Time, produced by the charity SafeLives in 2015. This is an excellent and well-thought-out piece of work, drawing some very pragmatic conclusions about areas where the support provided by different agencies could be enhanced. This charity was originally set up in 2005 as Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse—CAADA. It advocates the use of a risk-based approach, prioritising those at greatest risk of harm, and it takes a modern, facts-based research approach towards this issue.

We know that early intervention is one of the keys. Finding families under threat earlier will save lives—that is, in my submission, unarguable. It has been estimated that 85% of victims sought help from professionals, including from the medical profession, some five times on average in the year before they received effective help to stop the abuse. That represents five opportunities for disclosure of the issue, which, had they been taken, could have brought the situation to a stop a great deal earlier. Therefore, the argument for early intervention is very clear. Research also indicates that high-risk victims live with the situation for an average of between two and a half and three years before they receive successful help. During that time, the level of abuse almost invariably escalates, and the effect on children within the family over that average period can be very severe. On a more pragmatic note, late intervention is also very expensive, being estimated to cost more than £18,000 per instance. That is another powerful argument for more effort to be focused on earlier intervention.

Proactive identification and co-ordination are clearly also important. It is very clear that the strenuous efforts of the various agencies involved and recent positive initiatives have achieved a great deal, but there is a great deal more that can be done to ensure sufficient co-ordination between them. Greater co-ordination, proactively focused on early identification—and, in particular, on linkage between children’s and adult services—would be of great benefit. Although a great deal of work has been done to facilitate earlier identification, undoubtedly more could be done. Giving greater confidence to families that reporting will also result in effective action is also a priority, and, we hope, will promote the ability of people, as well as families and relatives, to reach out for help earlier and report incidents to the authorities.

Like other noble Lords across the House who have spoken, I welcome the draft domestic violence Bill, and in particular the focus on creating a robust and well-defined legal framework, which I understand will include for the first time a legal definition of the offence or offences and will consolidate the relevant legislation. That is a very positive development.

From my understanding the Bill has been well received, and its announcement has prompted many suggestions and recommendations from experts in this field. I was particularly struck by one line of argument that stressed the need to put the emphasis on the perpetrator rather than on the victim, utilising the risk-based approach that I referred to earlier in my remarks. I trust that this will be reflected in the Government’s consideration of the issue and in our deliberations when the Bill eventually comes before this House.

This is an extremely challenging, complex and multifaceted issue. We are all very grateful to my noble friend Lady Manzoor for having secured parliamentary time to air this important issue.

Civilian Use of Drones (EUC Report)

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to make a short intervention in the gap. Perhaps I could start by declaring my interests, first, in that the business with which I work has extensive activities as a consultant to the aerospace and defence sector; secondly, that I am a private pilot; and perhaps, thirdly, that my young son is a rather skilled operator of a toy drone—he is a rather better pilot than his father.

This is an extraordinarily complex subject which we have sought to tackle both in the excellent report of the committee chaired by my noble friend and in the debate today. It feels like the House of Lords at its very best in terms of bringing together diverse strands, technical interests, futurology, regulation and a number of different areas of expertise.

I strongly feel that we are at the dawn of a new age of aviation. I was struck by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, who talked about convergence—it is a much overused term but in this circumstance it makes a lot of sense. My noble friend Lord Wei spoke about the internet of things. When we look to regulate this amorphous physical manifestation of the digital age, it is extremely difficult, and we are in danger of creating a regulatory structure where, by the time we have got it up and running, the target has moved away.

The potential for this field is enormous, and we have heard about a number of the applications today. Beyond physical surveillance and carriage of goods, there will be limitless applications that we have yet to consider or even to dream about, but I am very struck by the old technology and the new. The aircraft that I fly was designed in the 1930s; the engine that it flies behind is essentially the same as one that can be bought new off the shelf today. It is very low technology but it is very reliable. The computer in the aircraft that I fly is nearly 50 years old—it is standing addressing your Lordships’ House this evening, and it is deeply fallible compared with the iPhone and smartphone technology that we have heard about. However, we should embrace this new technology and this new industry. It offers fabulous potential not only in the aerospace industry—in its training and operations—but, most particularly, in a wealth of value-added services. I particularly welcome the analysis of the report in that regard.

Of course, there are very clear dangers. Twenty years ago, when I had some responsibilities for aviation regulation, this type of activity was only really thought of in terms of hobbyists’ remote-control aircraft. Now it is open to a much broader field. We know that potentially enormous conflicts could occur with civil commercial aircraft and military aviation; there are privacy implications; there are nuisance concerns; and there are the dangers of the technology being used for nefarious purposes by terrorists and others who seek to commit criminal acts.

We cannot possibly cover all this within the short time available to us, but I want to say just a word about regulation. I believe that the CAA has made a strong start with CAP 722 of the Air Navigation Order, which is the basic mechanism by which our physical aviation is governed. Airspace is at a premium, particularly class G open airspace. I want to make one plea to the Minister, which is that he takes fully into account all users of airspace including light aircraft operators and those who use the precious and limited class G airspace. We are looking at the convergence of regulation here; we are looking at how the CAA interacts with the police and those who seek to regulate digital access and digital technology. I am very much reminded of the passage of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. By the time it became an Act, the world had moved on and we needed to start again.

I know that, having had the temerity to speak in the gap, I should now conclude my remarks. It is a fascinating field and I suspect that this report will provide a platform for many future debates.

Queen’s Speech

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, in his opening remarks to today’s session of debate on the gracious Speech, my noble friend Lord Faulks drew attention to the dangers of the so-called compensation culture, which he described as being worrying and as having a chilling effect on volunteering. I therefore very much welcome the series of announcements made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Justice as part of the Government’s campaign to crack down on insurance fraud.

The background to this is the depressing statistic from the Association of British Insurers which showed that the number of dishonest motor claims in 2013 increased by some 34%—a statistic worth dwelling on for a moment—to 59,900. While vehicle-related fraud is of course a major part of this, the tidal wave of claims of varying quality has a major effect on public bodies such as the National Health Service, education authorities and local government, as well as on businesses of many types. The situation we face has to a significant extent been exacerbated or even perhaps caused by the deregulation of conditional fee or so-called no-win no-fee arrangements, so that an industry of aggressive claims management companies has evolved.

In the introduction from the head of claims management regulation to that regulator’s annual report for 2012-13, he said:

“There is something about the nature of the claims industry which breeds, in too many that operate in it, a different kind of business behaviour—one that is less about putting the customer first and best business practice, but more about poor conduct and treating the consumer as little more than a commodity”.

That is a worrying state of affairs and that same regulator recorded some 12,000 complaints. That is a lot of complaints, many of which related to the PPI mis-selling scenario. Is it not a very rich irony that the greatest mis-selling scandal is now being exacerbated by the second greatest mis-selling scandal, namely that of claims management companies trying to engender greater levels of business?

Is it really right that these businesses should be aggressively touting for business by cold calling, texting or e-mailing the general public to encourage them to make a claim—any claim, it seems, and pretty much against anyone? This is backed up by relentless advertising on the television, online and in the print media, which is clearly targeted at those with time on their hands. The proposition seems to be very much, “Would you like to make some free money? Are you prepared to spend some time with us so that we can help you make a case?”. The regulator gives a case study of a claims management company in the north-west which generated many complaints about the “persistent and harassing” nature of its unsolicited calls:

“Consumers complained that they were encouraged to make a personal injury claim even where they had not suffered injury”.

That is an extraordinary state of affairs.

My right honourable friend’s recent announcement indicated certain areas where further action could be taken, namely: requiring courts to throw out compensation applications where claims have been fundamentally dishonest; banning lawyers or claims management companies from offering inducements in the form of cash or electronic goods; and improving the medical assessment of whip-lash injuries. There is much common sense there, but it might surprise some that courts do not already act on the first of those points and that strong medical assessments are not already in place.

My eye was taken by the measure which will ban lawyers from offering inducements in the form of cash and the advertising of that form of behaviour. However, will the Government take their clamp-down on this industry a step further? We now know that this is a £1 billion-pound industry, with many practitioners within it operating on a very dubious ethical basis, as the regulator conceded. I am not a banner by nature but in these particular circumstances, and until the industry can demonstrate its maturity and capability to act in a fair-minded way, I urge the Government to consider extending their suggested measure to ban the advertising of cash inducements into banning advertising overall for this industry.